Proper 19
Isaiah 50:4-9; Mark 8:27-38
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I.
Have you ever longed to get even with someone, but when the chance finally came, it didn’t quite satisfy you the way you thought it would?
Revenge sounds sweet but can taste bitter when it comes.
This is because revenge, vengeance, justice, is not something we are supposed to take into our own hands.
Rather, justice is a divine attribute. Something for God to mete out in His own manner and in His own time.
Today’s readings from Isaiah and Mark are talking about the vindication of God’s prophets, a kind of divine “getting even” but one that takes place on God’s terms, in God’s time.
In Isaiah 50:4, the prophet describes himself as one “who is taught” (in the KJV the word is learned):
The Lord God has given me
the tongue of those who are taught,
that I may know how to sustain with a word
him that is weary.
By what is Isaiah taught and in what is he called learned?
He is taught by God’s word. He is called learned in God’s truth.
And who are “the weary”?
They are children of God who have grown tired of the world’s lies.
And how are they sustained?
They are longing to be sustained by someone who will come and tell the truth.
Isaiah is someone, a prophet of God, who will tell the truth.
For this, he is punished.
In Isaiah 50:5-6 he tells us:
I gave my back to the smiters,
and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I hid not my face
from shame and spitting.
Isaiah is not afraid of the challenge of speaking God’s truth in a hostile environment.
In Isaiah 50:8 he describes his willingness to fight for the truth of God’s word:
Who will contend with me?
Let us stand up together.
Who is my adversary?
Let him come near to me.
Where does Isaiah’s courage come from?
It comes from the knowledge that God is helping him.
In Isaiah 50:7 he says:
For the Lord God helps me;
… therefore I have set my face like a flint….
Jesus displays that same prophetic courage. Luke 9:51 describes Jesus using words taken from Isaiah:
When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.
This is because Jesus is also a truth-teller, a prophet of God, and not afraid to challenge the world’s lies.
Now, the world tells two kinds of lies.
First, the world lies about God and the knowledge of God that is revealed to us in the Bible.
This knowledge is what Paul calls in 1 Corinthians 2:10 the “deep things of God” (NIV):
…these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
One of the things that has been revealed to us by God’s Spirit is that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16, KJV).
The Bible is also clear that there are no other children of God except those that are adopted by faith in to God’s family.
Paul writes in Galatians 4:4-5:
But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
He uses this important word, adoption, again in Ephesians 1:5:
…he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.
There are certainly other children in this world, those who are not the adopted children of God. Paul calls them “children of wrath” in Ephesians 2:3.
Jesus describes these children of wrath in John 8:44:
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
So, we see that there is a contest between warring families.
A family feud between the adopted children of God and the children of the devil.
Just this past week I heard a leading Christian deny this truth.
Addressing a gathering of young people in Singapore, Pope Francis said:
“All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all God’s children.”1
Now, there is some truth in what the Pope said, but it is mixed with falsehood, and, I have to believe, deliberately so.
I think the Pope meant what he said.
That’s because the true part of what he said is inoffensive, and the lie that he told is one the world wants to hear.
No one will smite the Pope or pull out his whiskers for telling popular truths and lies that everyone wants to hear.
Persecution will only come for those who tell the unpopular truths and who confront the world’s lies.
But what did the Pope say that was true and what did he say that was false?
He said that “God is God for all.” That is the true part.
But he drew a conclusion from that truth that contradicts the revealed word of God.
The Pope said that everyone is a child of God, but the Bible says that is only true of those who receive Jesus.
In John 1:11-12 we read:
He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.
What did those who received Jesus demonstrate that they had? They demonstrated that they had faith, that they believed in His name.
Faith is required to become an adopted child of God.
Paul tells us in Romans 10:17:
…faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.
The world desperately wants its lies to be true and will persecute those who challenge those lies.
This is why I think the Pope chose his words carefully and meant what he said. He does not want to face criticism or worse, persecution for telling the truth.
(Perhaps he had prudential and diplomatic reasons for doing so, after all, he was traveling abroad in a foreign country. I will leave it at that.)
I said there were two things the world lies about. The first is the knowledge of God and the deep things of God.
The second thing the world lies about is the world itself, nature, who and what we are by God’s design and who and what the world around us is, again by God’s design.
Paul describes our tendency to lie about ourselves and the world around us in Romans 1:18-20:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Paul continues in Romans 1:26-27:
women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and … men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.
This is not a popular thing to write or say, either in Paul’s time or today. For saying it, writing it, and increasingly for perhaps even thinking it, you may face persecution.
Isaiah faced persecution, but he was able to master his fear because he had confidence in God.
He also had no desire for revenge.
This is because Isaiah knows two things.
First, he knows that for telling God’s truth — which is nearly always an unpopular thing to do — he knows that he will be abused by men. He expects it. It comes with the territory. It is an occupational hazard.
Second, Isaiah knows that for telling God’s truth he will be vindicated.
Do you notice something?
In Isaiah 50:8 the prophet declares:
…he who vindicates me is near.
Because vindication is near, in Isaiah 50:9 the prophet can ask with confidence:
…who will declare me guilty?
What did you notice?
No promise of vindication is made by God to liars or to those who do not speak His truth plainly.
II.
Let’s turn now to Mark 8:27-38, where we meet another prophet, the Prophet, Jesus.
Let’s work out the implications of what Isaiah is talking about, that is, the implications of telling the truth about God.
Specifically, let’s focus on three things in Mark 8:29-33.
The first thing to notice is that Peter tells the truth about Jesus.
In Mark 8:29 we read the following dialogue between Jesus and Peter:
And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.”
This was a dangerous thing for Peter to say.
To say someone is the Christ is to say that He is the God-appointed ruler, that He is the king.
But there was already a king in Judea and an emperor in Rome. They did not accept any challenge to their authority.
For Peter to say “You are the Christ” was to make an overtly — and dangerous — political statement.
First Century Palestine did not have the First Amendment.
Peter was therefore exposing himself to the smiters and to having his whiskers pulled out.
The second thing to notice is that Jesus, Himself a prophetic truth-teller, tells the truth about what He has come to do.
In Mark 8:31 we read:
And [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
The sacrificial death of Jesus is one of those “deep things” of God and so we are not to deny it.
But that’s exactly what Peter does. He denies a Spirit-revealed, deep thing of God.
Continuing with Mark 8:32-33 we read:
And [Jesus] said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.”
Peter rebukes Jesus for uttering the plain truth about His coming death.
Jesus rebukes Peter by calling him Satan.
In Mark 7:24-37, Jesus calls a Greek woman a dog simply for begging Him to exorcise a demon from her possessed daughter.
Jesus calls those other children, those who have not yet been adopted by God into His family, “dogs” and “Satan.”
There is a picture we have of Jesus that is “sugar and spice and everything nice.”
But that picture is a lie that comes to us from the false prophets who want a safe Jesus.
The only reason to want a safe Jesus is because you want a declawed and toothless church.
But Christ is no such thing.
In describing the Christ-figure, Aslan, in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Mr. Beaver says to Lucy:
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “… Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”
I think the people who preach a safe Jesus do so because they want a safe church.
They want a church that is safe for the state, a church that will never challenge Caesar to yield his throne to its rightful occupant, King Jesus.
A church that is safe for Caesar will never contend with Caesar.
Consequently, Caesar needs only to pay lip service to this safe church, if he even bothers to listen to the church at all.
I remember from my time as a minister in the Episcopal Church, in the Diocese of New York, when the former Bishop of New York was addressing us clergy at the cathedral.
He told us that when he first became bishop, he and the other Episcopal bishops in New York State had an annual audience with the governor.
This was a long-standing tradition, a holdover from times past when the church had more political clout.
He also told us that now, as he was nearing the end of his tenure, those annual meetings with the governor had stopped — perhaps because of Covid, I can’t recall — but his point was that neither side sought to continue them. Neither side saw the need anymore.
Like most mainline Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church has stopped telling the truth, which means the governor no longer needs to fear her.
She has become a safe church.
Peter wanted a safe Christ, or at least one who could stick to the agenda, the plan for the restoration of Israel.
So, according to Mark 8:32:
“…Peter took him, and began to rebuke him.”
Matthew’s version of this story retains some critical details that Mark leaves out. Matthew 16:22 tells us:
And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”
The blasphemy of Peter! He goes so far as to invoke God against Jesus.
He pits Father against Son: “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”
Really, Peter? This has only been God’s will since all eternity, since before the world began, to redeem the fallen human race by the sacrificial death of His Son.
Fortunately, Peter eventually comes to understand this deep truth of God, writing in 1 Peter 1:20:
[Jesus] was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake.
But at this point in the story, Peter is ignorant, and in his ignorance, he rebukes Jesus and starts spewing his own lies:
“This shall never happen to you.”
This shall never happen?
This is what the foreshadowing of the law of Moses and the sacrifices were all about.
This is why Abel’s sacrifice was accepted, but Cain’s was not.
This is why God provided a substitute, a ram in place of Isaac, so that Abraham would not sacrifice his son.
Because such a sacrifice would have been a lie. A lie about God. Just like Cain’s was.
God’s wrath, His justice, cannot be satisfied by our own efforts at self-justification.
In those days, a father had every right to sacrifice his own son, the flesh of his own flesh, the son of his own loins.
Isaac was nothing if not an extension of Abraham’s body — both legally and in terms of blood — so it was Abraham’s choice to do with Isaac as he wished.
Understand this: the unusual part of that story is not that a man would think to sacrifice his son or would think nothing of a God who told him to do so.
Human sacrifice was commonplace and the fathers of Israel sacrificed their own sons and daughters until the day God took the kingdom from them and sent them into exile as a punishment for this abomination.
(Keep in mind that most of the prophets who lived good lives, the court prophets, those on the payroll of the kings of Israel and Judah, never condemned this human sacrifice, or else they found clever ways of talking about it that obscured the plain truth.
This is how Isaiah 56:10 describes these court prophets, these preachers of old:
His watchmen are blind,
they are all without knowledge;
they are all dumb dogs,
they cannot bark;
dreaming, lying down,
loving to slumber.
In other words, these preachers are like dogs who won’t bark when they know a threat is lurking.
You have seen all the church buildings that adorn the landscape of our country. Often, they are built like citadels, fortresses with watchtowers. But have our preachers been barking? Have our people been dreaming and lying down?)
Back to Abraham’s near sacrifice of his own son.
The difference in this story is not that Abraham would have gone through with it but that Abraham had faith that God would provide a substitute, so that he would not have to sacrifice his son.
The difference is that Abraham told the truth to Isaac when Isaac nervously asked in Genesis 2:27:
“Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
Listen to Abraham’s prophetic — and true — answer a verse later:
“God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”
And God did just that.
God directed Abraham’s eyes to the nearby thicket where he found a ram caught by his horns. Genesis 22:13-14:
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord will provide; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.
As God provided Abraham with a ram in the thicket, so Jesus now tells Peter in Mark 8:31:
“…the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
“I am your substitute, Peter,” is what Jesus is saying. “I will be the ram. I take your place. God is providing for you right now. He is preparing to vindicate you in Me.”
But Peter prefers to substitute his own lies for God’s eternal truth.
Peter rejects God’s truth.
In effect Peter is telling God, “Do not provide the sacrifice. I do not need it. I will find a way to save you and myself.”
In other words, as Matthew 16:22 puts it:
“God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.”
III.
God promises to vindicate those who tell the truth about Him, but God would not be vindicating Peter so long as Peter persists in this falsehood.
Neither will God vindicate churches and denominations that lie about Him.
Peter lies for the same reason each and every one of us lies: to save face, or, to use an older word, for the sake of honor.
We can’t bear the shame that we are murderers, liars, thieves, adulterers, fornicators, and idolators.
We lie because we can’t bear the shame that we are liars.
When we lie to cover our shame, we ignore the divine plan from the beginning.
God’s plan is simple: tell the truth about God and admit the truth about yourself and you can be saved.
Lie about either and you will be condemned.
But telling the truth means taking up the cross.
In Mark 8:34 Jesus says:
“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
The cross of truth is a burden only a few Christians seem willing to carry, let alone the institutional church.
But it’s the unique and special burden of the church to carry the truth of God out into the world, as unpopular and as hated as it might make her.
Like Peter, very few of us realize what we’re getting ourselves into when we first come to faith and confess that Jesus is the Christ.
But Jesus promises us in Mark 8:35 that:
…whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.
In other words, God promises to vindicate the church, and the individual men and women in it who are brave enough to tell the truth about God.
The nature of this vindication is another one of those deep things of God.
Suffering for the gospel’s sake prepares us for the same vindication that God promised to Isaiah, to all His prophets, and to all those in every generation who tell the truth about God.
But failure to speak the truth using plain words will rob us of this promised vindication, of the resurrection to eternal life. Jesus is the first to experience this vindication but the hope of the Christian is that we too will rise with Him.
We fail to speak plainly when we equivocate, deny, or promote our own word over God’s.
To equivocate means, literally, to give equal voice to all sides.
Look at the conversation between Jesus and His disciples in Mark 8:27-28.
There are three examples of equivocation in it. The first one concerns John the Baptist:
And Jesus went on with his disciples, to the villages of Caesare′a Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Eli′jah; and others one of the prophets.”
John’s disciples wanted their beheaded master back. He was good at getting under Herod’s skin. Things were just getting started when John got himself arrested.
In Matthew 14:5 we read:
And though [Herod] wanted to put [John] to death, he feared the people, because they held him to be a prophet.
If John the Baptist had returned to life, Herod would have had a political revolt on his hands, which is what many people wanted.
The second equivocation is about Elijah:
“…and others say, Eli′jah….”
Talmudic tradition, which was just forming at the time of Christ, makes Elijah the arbiter and resolver of all rabbinic disputes.
Whatever the rabbis could not decide they could leave undecided until Elijah returned to decide them.
Saying that Elijah had returned would have meant that all these disputes — things like the ritual washing of hands and pots as well as kosher dietary laws — disputes that Jesus resolved easily by saying they were unnecessary additions to the law of Moses — Elijah’s return meant that these would finally get resolved.
But who stood to lose if Elijah came back from the dead? The Pharisees. The Jews wouldn’t need them anymore to decide matters of ritual and religion.
It’s easy to control the Messiah when the Messiah never comes.
Who stood to gain? Any Jew who wanted to break the religious, social, and political power of the Pharisees.
Finally, the last equivocation:
“…others [say] one of the prophets….”
Having any one of the old prophets return to life would have met the needs of the zealots or other Jewish Nationalists looking to drive the Romans and the Herodians out.
Are you starting to see why it was so important for the disciples to be clear about who Jesus was and what He had come to do?
To say that Jesus was the Christ was a dangerous political statement, but to say that Jesus was John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets of old was equally dangerous — and political — as well.
This is why Jesus charges His disciples in Mark 8:30 not to tell anyone that He is the Christ, or about what He says is going to happen to Him. Do not reveal the eternal plan from God. Do not tell the lying world God will provide the substitute for its sins through His Son.
Why? Because the world won’t believe and worse, they may try to stop it from happening.
How often do we pay lip service to all sides in a contest, including the obvious lies about God and human nature, just to avoid conflict?
The Pope did this during his visit to Singapore.
In his address this past Friday he said:
…if you start arguing, “My religion is more important than yours...,” or “Mine is the true one, yours is not true....,” where does this lead? Somebody answer. [A young person answers, “Destruction”.] That is correct.2
The Pope seems afraid that telling the truth will cause conflict.
But in Matthew 10:34 Jesus said:
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
There is a cost for telling the truth about God. That cost is symbolized by taking up the cross. Jesus took up His cross and we must take up our crosses as well.
There is a cost, but there is also a reward for telling the truth about God.
The reward is that God draws near to us. God will dwell in the church who tells the plain truth about Him. Isaiah 50:7-8 says:
For the Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been confounded;
therefore I have set my face like a flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
he who vindicates me is near.
After all the self-serving equivocation ascribed to the “some say-ers” in Mark 8:28, Peter speaks the plain truth in verse 29:
You are the Christ.
For this simple, plain declaration of truth, Peter will be vindicated.
IV.
Peter’s vindication comes much later, at the end of Peter’s life, when, by his death, Peter will give glory to God.
Jesus tells Peter in John 21:18-19:
Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.” (This he said to show by what death he was to glorify God.)”
This is Peter’s vindication, or, at least, the beginning of his vindication. He gets to glorify God in his death.
But you say, “Wait a minute, Peter has to die? What kind of vindication is that?”
Well, think of it this way. In Romans 6:23, Paul says the wages of sin is death.
What does that mean?
It means this.
You spend your life cooking and cleaning for someone, being a faithful spouse, doing an honest day’s work, and when the end of your life comes, when pay day finally arrives, and it’s time to collect your wages, what do you get?
Death.
Maybe you think you deserve better than that. You have a better position in society, a better job, and you spend your life achieving great things, doing the impossible, building rockets, fighting great boardroom battles, winning wars, and then you come to the same end.
You get the same paycheck.
Death.
But Jesus tells Peter that Peter’s death will glorify God.
That sounds like another “deep thing of God” to me, a truth that could only be revealed by the Spirit of truth.
And I say it’s better to die glorifying God than to hear Jesus call you “Satan” and still go on living.
Peter will be vindicated. In his death he is allowed to glorify God, instead of dying just to pay his debt to sin.
And it’s not just Peter who will be vindicated. It’s every believer who believes and tells the truth about God.
The LORD God makes this promise in 1 Samuel 2:30:
…for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.
Two other men died with Jesus that day on Mount Calvary.
They were both thieves, but one of them gained paradise that day. One of them experienced his vindication. One of them gave glory to God in his death.
He gained it not by baptism, not by a life of good works, or by making amends for past misdeeds, but by telling the truth about his own sinful life and the Savior he needs in plain and simple terms.
In Luke 23:39 we read about the first criminal, the condemned criminal:
One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
Compare this to Peter’s plain, simple, and true statement, “You are the Christ.”
What if the Pope had said this simple truth in Singapore and let the power of it linger in the air while his audience pondered it in the presence of the Spirit?
(You know, when you speak the truth about God, you are not alone. You have an advocate, a helper. Isaiah says, “For the Lord God helps me.”
If you want God’s help to do great things, start doing the great things God wants done.
If you want your words to leave a lasting impression, start speaking the truths God wants spoken.
God will always help those who seek to do His will, to speak His words after Him.)
Instead, the condemned thief asks derisively, “Are you not the Christ?”
Instead, Pope Francis repeated the world’s favorite universalist lie, that all religions are the same, that all men are brothers.
But then there is the other thief. The one who speaks the truth, perhaps even for the first time in his life.
You see all men are brothers, brothers in wickedness, brothers in the sinful flesh, but some of us by faith escape our wicked family of origin.
The penitent thief spoke the truth in his last hour.
In Luke 23:40-41 he says to the other, unrepentant thief:
“Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”
And it is enough.
Just as it is for any of you who want to confess this same truth: Jesus is Lord.
V.
Perhaps you have not yet spoken this truth. Perhaps now is the time for you to do so.
A verse later he turns to Jesus with this humble prayer:
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
To which Jesus from His agony graciously replies:
“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).
Jesus describes the power of truth to save in John 8:32?
…you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
Free from sin, free from death, free from shame.
Christian, do you believe this?
If so, then be willing to forgo a little vindication in the here and now, knowing that whatever suffering you face, it is most certainly deserved. Also, put aside entirely any thoughts of revenge.
Even if you or I were paid the wages we deserved for sin a thousand times over, even if we were made to die a thousand deaths, we could never cover even one blasphemy, one casual taking of the Lord’s name in vain, or one lie that robs God of the glory that is His due.
Take up your cross and follow Christ.
Let us not be afraid to be dogs who bark.
Let us tell the truth about God the world He has made.
We may not know quite what we are getting ourselves into, but we can be confident that God will vindicate us.
Let us pray:
O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom: Defend us, thy humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Questions for reflection and discussion:
1. Justice is an ____________ of God.
2. Name the two kinds of lies the world tells.
3. Name the two types of children in the world.
4. We become children of God by ____________.
5. When Peter said, “You are the Christ” he was making a dangerous ____________ statement.
6. Explain how Peter denies the truth when he rebukes Jesus.
7. God promises to ____________ the church, and the men and women in it who are brave enough to tell the truth about God.
8. False prophets and unfaithful preachers are like dogs who refuse to ____________ when there is a threat.
9. Why do we equivocate?
10. Explain how Peter is vindicated.
11. How was the penitent thief saved?
12. One way to take up our crosses and follow Jesus is to tell the ____________ about Him.
Parents and Grandparents, you are responsible to apply God’s Word to your children’s lives. Here is some help. Young Children – draw a picture about something you hear during the sermon. Explain your picture(s) to your parents or the minister after church. Older Children – Discuss with your parents one or both of the following: 1) How do you know when something is a lie? Do liars deserve a “fair hearing”?
(1) attribute; (2) lies about God and nature; (3) children of God/children of the Devil; (4) adoption; (5) political; (6) he denies God’s eternal plan to provide a substitute for us; (7) vindicate; (8) bark; (9) to avoid conflict; (10) in his death he glorifies God, instead of dying to pay his debt to sin; (11) by telling the plain truth about himself and God; (12) truth
Preached on September 15, 2024 at Scarsdale Community Baptist Church.
“Apostolic Journey to Singapore: Interreligious Meeting with Young People in the Catholic Junior College (13 September 2024): Francis,” Apostolic Journey to Singapore: Interreligious Meeting with Young People in the Catholic Junior College (13 September 2024) | Francis, accessed September 13, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2024/september/documents/20240913-singapore-giovani.html.
Ibid.
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